With recent home networks, there has been a progress in the introduction of home appliance coordination whereby various home appliances are connected to a network. This progress has been achieved by, in addition to coordination of AV appliances through Internet Protocol (IP) connection by Ethernet (registered trademark) or wireless Local Area Network (LAN), the Home Energy Management System (HEMS) which has a function to manage power consumption for addressing environmental issues and to turn on/off the appliances through an operation outside home. Detection of the user position in controlling the home appliances through such home appliance coordination allows the home appliances to be controlled according to the user position. As a result, improvement is expected in the operability and the accuracy of the control over the home appliances.
It is often the case that the Global Positioning System (GPS) function cannot be used for detecting an indoor position. In view of this, a position detection apparatus has been introduced in recent years which detects its position using a GPS antenna intended for indoor use (indoor GPS antenna). Furthermore, a position detection apparatus has also been introduced which captures radio waves of plural wireless LANs and estimates its position based on the strength and so on of the radio waves.
Moreover, a mobile robot has been proposed which includes a position detection apparatus that detects its indoor position by autonomous navigation (e.g. see Patent Literature (PTL) 1).